


The Promised Land

by TheMuchTooMerryMaiden



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pining, Religious Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden/pseuds/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While she is at Oxford, during the estrangement, Holmes undertakes some theological work so that he can feel closer to Mary...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Promised Land

Focus was increasingly becoming a problem the more this cold winter and spring lingered. It was he felt a sign of the difficulty of this interminable masquerade that he was reduced to reading the Bible purely because Russell had left it at the cottage; because it was a part of her, and even then his mind was not on the text, turning constantly to thoughts of her. With his finger marking the page he closed his eyes, rubbing them with the fingertips of his other hand and let his head fall back onto the headboard.

The Bible, her copy of the King James Version, was here at the cottage as a result of one of the most recent skirmishes with her Aunt, just before the start of the Hilary Term last year. Russell had strode into the cottage later at night than she would usually call, magnificent in her flashing anger with a bag of books and a request that she be allowed to store them at the cottage. The books of course had gone to the ‘spare room’, a room that Holmes was sure all of them, he, Russell and Mrs Hudson mentally characterised as ‘Russell’s Room’ although none of them would say it. Delicate questioning over a late supper had not induced Russell to be specific but it seemed the Aunt had taunted Russell with comments about her finally seeing sense and abandoning her faith; Holmes had felt that the woman was lucky to survive in one piece. Not for the first time he reflected that had he not been able to offer Russell a sanctuary he might very well have found himself investigating the death of Miss Klein, looking for the blunt object that had been used to beat in her skull. He smiled to himself, sitting up slightly thinking, _I would simply have had to find a way to convince the constabulary that it was a complicated and vindictive suicide, it would not have been the first time I took such liberties in the name of Justice and Laws be damned._

After picturing Russell so clearly a thought struck him that he would focus and read the text as she would read it. He would, in her absence attempt to participate in this abiding interest of hers, reading with care and concentration and an attention to word choice and to theme, even though he did not know when (if, a treacherous mental voice offered) he would see her again. Over the course of the next few hours, with a lamp burning through the night illuminating the delicate almost translucent pages he read through the Pentateuch, struggling with each word and phrase in an attempt to ensure that he got all of the meaning from the text. Sometimes he paused, eyes closing, able to visualise the story now as he had not been able to before his own wanderings in the Palestinian desert. 

None of the text was new to him. As a properly educated Victorian gentleman Scripture lessons had formed a surprisingly large part of his early schooling and that gave the task some of its difficulty – it encouraged him to skip and to gloss over parts of the text especially the long lists of prohibitions and exhortations. Each time he found that he had lost focus he resolutely brought his mind back to the text; he was determined to try to see and understand as Russell would have seen and understood although he recognised that she was vastly his superior in experience in this field where he could not claim even the status of amateur. Through the dark night he read on until he reached the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy and its last two verses:

> _51because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Mer'ibah–Ka'desh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. 52Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel._

For an infinitesimal moment the words seemed to speak directly to him, _this is what will happen_ , he thought with a bleak certainty. Abruptly he flung back the light blanket and got up, tossing the book carelessly on top of it and then stood rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. The same thought went through his mind again and he began to pace. Almost as soon as he began to move he sought to abandon the idea. These words were not speaking to him; he knew his reaction to be a result of an overwrought set of nerves. It was ridiculous, the words were fable and metaphor, perhaps even history but these ancient stories had no relevance to a twentieth century situation. But, he thought, that is not how Russell would see it; she would seek to explore the light these same words had shed on all the centuries, their universality. He went back to the bed and picking up the book sat down and found his place again although he merely stared at the page.

 _Did the words have any universality?_ He could see that the precepts of the New Testament could be universal, although his own experience had taught him that moral issues were very seldom black and white, but encouraged by his Christian upbringing he had seen the Old Testament more as a story. Now, as much as anything so that he could deny the parallel completely he decided to give it due consideration. 

As the Israelites had been carried off into slavery his own and Russell’s lives had been transformed overnight by the malice of their opponent. He could see that he and Russell were figuratively wandering in the wilderness, without even each other, guided only by the plan they had devised in Palestine and developed on the trip home. To continue the parallel their promised land should be resuming their old lives and occupations once they had dealt with the unknown woman who had plagued them and their friends; but would they reach it? Framing the question in those terms gave him an answer almost instantly, no they would not. His breath caught in his throat. _I cannot, I will not go back to how things were before!_ was his only thought for a few seconds and suddenly sweat stood out on his skin. Unconsciously he clutched the leather-bound volume to his chest and closed his eyes. Slowly he brought the book up to his lips and then taking control forced himself to breathe properly and relax his suddenly tense muscles. _Why,_ he asked himself, _am I so sure that we, or is it just I, will not see our promised land?_

The plan, he knew, was good and robust. Working from what they knew and could deduce of their adversary it had a good chance of bringing her out of her concealment and allowing them to capture her and for him it had the added advantage that with luck it would protect Russell. His plan, their plan, would bring them to their river Jordan; for all it had not been an easy plan to carry through. What he had referred to as a ‘judicious, prodigious expenditure of time’ had certainly been prodigious, had he thought it would be this much time then he might have devised a different plan even if it had been more dangerous; he was painfully aware of the very real toll it was taking on him and worried almost constantly about what it was doing to Russell. On their voyage back from Palestine they had both worked hard at their parts but he believed that it had been harder for Russell since she had little experience of and no natural aptitude for mean-mindedness and he knew from one of the late-night conversations in her cabin that she was largely drawing on her Aunt’s store of invective and spite. He remembered with a shudder the first time he had heard his father’s voice coming from his own mouth while acting a part and how he had been heartily sick – Russell must have experienced much the same feelings. But as the trip continued he knew that he had begun to truly explore the things that irritated him about Russell and that she must have done the same. What partnership could stand several weeks of dwelling obsessively on the faults of the people involved?

Throughout this estrangement he persisted in mentally picturing her as the fifteen year-old girl he had met while he was watching bees, un-loved, without friends and uncared for, her daily life rapidly leading her to the conclusion that she was unlovable and not worth caring for. She had in April of 1915 still been fighting these growing feelings, trying to cling on to the love and support she had experienced from her family, but he knew from both his own experience and his knowledge of their similarities that she would have lost the fight and withdrawn into a cold, emotionless intellectual world as he had done. For him at fifteen there had been no life-line. Without his mother’s influence and seeing Mycroft more and more infrequently as the latter made his way in the world he had experienced almost unrelieved negativity and from this he had learned lessons that were still costing him dear. 

For Russell he knew he had been that life-line as, all unknowing, she had become to him. Now, however, she was cast adrift and he feared that she would revert to that withdrawn state and he supposed that that was why he saw her as her fifteen year old self. Now Russell was without the family he, Mrs Hudson and even Watson and Mycroft had become to her she would be returning to that same state of isolation except that now she had tutors and friends in Oxford who could and would provide her with the approval and respect that all human beings need. Would she want to come back? Would her promised land be his promised land? It was possible that to her the Promised Land would be to be rid of the whole boiling, him and his mysterious adversary.

_So, now here we are,_ he thought, _apart, having spent weeks dwelling on each other’s faults and then months stewing over the unpleasant, uncomfortable and in some cases unfortunately true things we said about and to each other._ His logical reasoning could predict only one end to this – the end of the partnership. He knew that end would not come soon or at any rate before the final unravelling of their plan since he knew with utter certainty that she would not leave him in this situation any more than he would have abandoned her. 

_Am I considering all the information?_ The thought came to him as though from elsewhere, from outside of him, dropping fully formed into his mind and he began to cast about for which pieces of data he had overlooked. Gazing to towards the dark rectangle of the window, his eyes unfocused, taking on the air of abstraction that Watson had mentioned in his writings, he went through the list of pertinent information not relating to the case but relating to the partnership.

It was an unusual sensation for him to be unsure about things that he had been able to observe himself but he knew it to be the case as it related to his partnership with Russell. He had known with certainty for over a year about his own feelings as to Russell and in truth he had known for far longer than that. When he had realised shortly after he met Russell that he wanted more than friendship it had horrified him. He had too often come across older, jaded men who desired young, innocent females to react with anything other than revulsion when he thought he detected the same tendencies in himself. He had come close to sending her away or to going himself but that would have left Russell almost solely in the hands of her aunt, a punishment that she did not deserve. He had set Mycroft to find out what other options were available for the girl’s living arrangements and was told that it had been Russell’s own choice to live with her aunt. It would seem that she had weighed her desire to return to England and to attend Oxford against the problems with her aunt and made her decision known. 

At the very first Mycroft seemed somewhat bemused by long discussions of the welfare of an orphan neighbour but Holmes knew that Mycroft missed even less than he did and would have reached conclusions, unfortunately correct conclusions. The twin facts that his brother, a shrewd judge of character and of the weaknesses of men, saw nothing amiss and that he had been prepared to orchestrate Russell leaving showed him that whilst he desired Russell he need not categorise himself as a ‘dirty old man’. He had decided on Russell’s eighteenth birthday as he stood outside the door of her room listening to the sounds of her sleeping for several centuries that his only recourse was to play the waiting game and if he waited in vain then so be it, the time spent helping, supporting and training Russell would still be the best use he had ever made of his time.

What he was unsure about was Russell’s regard or otherwise for him. He knew that she cared for him and valued his friendship – she had made that plain on any number of occasions, and in any number of ways many of which he did not really care to think about. In their ‘trip’ to Palestine alone had she not sat with him in the aftermath of his encounter with Bey, supporting him through one of his longest nights with her silent presence and the gentle touch of her hand? She had tended to his wounds and, he had learned, in a few brief but evocative sentences of Ali’s, supported him with her own body to enable them to remove him to safety. _But did she love him? Or at least,_ he thought, _could she come to love me in the way that I love her?_

There had been indications but it was difficult to be objective enough to be sure that he was putting the correct interpretation on them. One key event he thought had been when she had asked for a second tent, surely if she had been indifferent to his physical presence that would not have occurred to her. He knew that he had found their shared tent damned difficult. He had dared to hope that her request for the second tent had been for the same reason that he had been on the point of asking for one – that their proximity was becoming all that he was aware of. _But another possible interpretation was that she found my close physical presence repellent,_ he thought. Abruptly, he stood up Russell’s Bible still in his hand, closed on one forefinger marking that same page at the end of Deuteronomy, and walked obliquely to the window; it had become instinctive to approach it from the side since he spent so much time watching his watchers. Mechanically he noted the single point of light from the cigarette that one of them was smoking, they were not getting less obvious that was for sure, but his gaze soon became unfocused as he looked to the faintly lightening sky and continued to classify the evidence in this most personal case. _No,_ he concluded, _if that had been the case she would not have reacted in the way that she did to the few times I permitted myself to hold her._

He knew he needed to consider those shining moments even though he had tried very hard not to think about them during this pretended estrangement feeling that ‘that way madness lay’. But in any investigation it was of great importance that all of the evidence should be weighed. 

That the only time he might ever kiss Russell had been in a windowless interview room at Scotland Yard and that the kiss had been so chaste as to barely merit the name, came close to both farce and tragedy in his opinion. It had been clear that his antagonist was particularly vindictive and excessive when he had arrived at Russell’s Oxford rooms and discovered the second bomb but it was not until after that Covent Garden concert that he had begun seriously to fear.

From the time they had returned to Billy and the cab until they were on Captain Jones ship a degree of anxiety beyond that which he thought he was capable of feeling had gripped him. There had been other cases where his own life and occasionally Watson’s had been in danger but those feelings had been nothing in comparison to the sheer panic he felt for that twenty-four hour period. And then someone had shot at Russell. If he had not already realised how he felt about her that would have done it. It had been a physical pain, she had dropped so suddenly that he had been sure she was wounded and yet it seemed that he was feeling the pain. Once he had established that she was not hurt his next thought had been, strangely, to get away from her, before he utterly gave himself away. He had run from the room although he knew that there was no chance that he would be able to catch the sniper because had he remained he would have pulled her into his arms and never let her go. 

Returning to Scotland Yard after questioning a bemused and clearly clueless young matron who just happened to be strolling past the building with her infant he had only one thing on his mind; to keep Russell safe until he could remove her from danger. He was aware that she would know that that was his intention and that she would resent it to a serious degree but at that point he did not care – he would keep her safe even if he was only keeping her safe to be angry and resentful. It posed a significant difficulty, therefore to keep her at the police station whilst he organised their retreat. Their partnership had progressed beyond where he could order her to stay where she was, he needed to explain but he had no time to explain. Faced with this dilemma he had been overcome by a wave of tenderness towards her compounded of the love he felt for her, his admiration of her never failing courage and recognition that her desire to be out and doing was a measure of her regard for him. ( _That’s another point of evidence,_ he thought.) It was for that reason that after he had tried to explain why he needed her to stay in the safe surroundings of the Yard he had allowed himself that one kiss. Even now his lips tingled as he remembered the smoothness of her skin and the scent of her. In that second he had neither known nor cared what her reaction would be, he certainly did not expect that she would be so overcome. It was nearly his undoing. In the heightened emotion of the moment he wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and kiss her properly, he wanted never to let her go but his rational mind took over and instead he made good his escape before she pulled herself together, before he ruined everything. 

Many aspects of the time they spent in Palestine he had already considered as he had gone through the evidence in the case. Russell’s and his suggested plans and counter plans had demonstrated each person’s desire to protect the other and he knew from the similarities of their thought processes that Russell would always prefer to put herself at risk than to risk him, but that would be the case whether Russell had feelings of friendship or something warmer. Their final chess game the night before they set off to Acre had been his counter offer to her suggestion of what could be called the ‘Judith’ approach. It was in his opinion a better plan; it was the plan that he thought had the best chance of keeping her safe. He had known that he needed to convince her and it had been surprisingly easy. He had focused on the beginning of the plan, when Russell would be away from him and considerably safer; together they had considered the end of the plan when she would have to act. The thought clearly made her nervous possibly in a way it would not have done six months ago, recent events had given them both a reminder of their limitations. He saw the realisation come to her that he was placing his life in her hands and that although she would be apart from him and apparently leaving him as bait for their opponent, that this plan would be truly in her hands – he was making her a gift of his safety, of his life. As he watched her she paled, looked down, fiddling with that makeshift chess piece, and then looked up into his face and unconsciously squared her shoulders. _When faced with the unthinkable,_ she had said, _one chooses the merely impossible._

Her bravery had taken his breath away. He had held out his arms to her, swept up in a sudden inexplicable feeling of joy rather than desire, and she had moved into his arms. The strangeness of the situation had at first made him awkward. This was not the first time he had comforted a woman but it was certainly the first time he had comforted a woman who meant so much to him. He felt her tremble in his arms and tightened his hold on her until he felt her relax and could relax himself feeling the warmth of her in his arms, inhaling the scent of her. It was a shining moment to look back on, he had occasionally in this long, cold winter allowed himself to remember the feeling of her in his arms, but his consideration of the scene at dawn on this early spring morning was of a different type, he was using his analytical mind and could see it for what it was. She did have warmer feelings for him although she would find it hard to see that for herself. Her energies having been devoted for the last more than four years to the analytical, the logical and the deductive it would take her time to learn to include the emotional again, _I have really hoist myself on my own petard,_ he thought with a rueful smile.

Still staring at the lightening sky he relaxed, his arms falling to his sides he realised that he had the answer to his questions. _I truly am a novice, an incompetent at this theological interpretation,_ he thought, _I know now that my initial premise was wrong, the Promised Land was never to return to things as they were, as if the Israelites had decided to go back to Egypt and settle back to making their mud bricks, our Promised Land lies beyond this River Jordan. That was why I was so sure I would not get there, because that is not my, our, destination._

It was true that he still did not know if he would reach his Promised Land but he felt a hopefulness that had eluded him since they had returned from Palestine. _Perhaps,_ he thought, _I can hurry things on a little, I think my health is about to take a sudden turn for the worse..._

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posting here from Letters of Mary, just for completeness


End file.
